Paid Off MTG and Scores Dropped

Happy Wednesday Rebels! Not concerned about score decreases but was a little surprised with some. Not sure I'll even do the SSL, in no need of new credit and hopefully my scores will still get the best rates if I need it. I'm still on a high from paying off my MTG! Still a lazy file with little change month to month. Only difference from last month is I went from one revolver reporting 3% IND, 0.30% AGG to 1 revolver reporting 0.54% IND, 0.048% AGG and MTG balance of $5500 to $0.

I wouldn't be concerned, as paying off a mortgage has got to be a great feeling!

While implied, I'm assuming you have no other open installment accounts?

Nope. Paid off auto a few years ago. Just CC's and LOC now. Assume that is the reason for the major score decreases. I've been consistently riding those 850's on my classic scores for a couple + years. It was jarring to see the drop but at this stage, I don't care. Would not have felt this way a few years ago...

Just grateful to be debt free.

Seeing those 850s go away can be tough after working hard to achieve them. It's one of the reasons why I'm always hesitant to accept scorecard reassignment by adding a revolver, as silly as that is.

Thanks for sharing the data points. We'll commiserate with you on the score decrease. However, big congratulations on paying off your mortgage!

Okay. Was just about to hide my MTG tab on my spreadsheet and read one of the many snapshots I've posted in the many sheets in my financial spreadsheet created when I started my journey 6+ years ago. I know we've had to unlearn things that have later been proven to be wrong but I don't recall this one. The 12 - 15 pt loss on my classic 8's was based on what I thought I learned back in the day is because I no longer have an installment loan. Lost much more on auto/CC 8's (30 - 40pts). But this post by Dumbee made me re-think. I went back to my MF3B sheet which goes back to 2018 when I started a subscription. Even with the thresholds mentioned below I was 850, 844 & 848 on classic 8's or 850 across the board. I'm pretty sure I'm as clean as can be and once I got on track years ago, seldom carried more than 8% AGG (always less than 25% IND) and still had 850's across the board. So technically, no longer sure why I lost so many points if in fact I still get the credit, score wise, from installment loans when closed while still on report. I do recall a slight drop when I paid off my car (still had the MTG) but only lost single digit pts on industry 8's. Nothing like the drop after paying off my MTG. Seems like I did in fact lose mix pts related to paying off my MTG. I know about buffers and assume I had a decent "reserve" which should not have caused this type of drop, with or without. I opened a new account in 11/2020 and lost nothing on EQ8 - 850 and 5 pts on TU - 845, 2 on EX - 848 which TU returned to 850 8 months later and EX right at 1 yr (exhausted impact of inquiry). Thoughts?

Do you believe the loss to be something other than the boost associated from IA utilization (significantly paid down) / Amounts Owed?

Do you have any access to Fico negative reason statements at higher scores above 800? Discover card CLI denial letters are great for this, as you get negative statements up to a score of 849. My guess is that prior to your MTG payoff you had no negative statement related to installment loans, where now your #1 slot is probably occupied by "no recent installment loan activity" or something similar.

BrutalBodyShots wrote: ↑Mon Dec 12, 2022 10:23 pm Do you believe the loss to be something other than the boost associated from IA utilization (significantly paid down) / Amounts Owed? Do you have any access to Fico negative reason statements at higher scores above 800? Discover card CLI denial letters are great for this, as you get negative statements up to a score of 849. My guess is that prior to your MTG payoff you had no negative statement related to installment loans, where now your #1 slot is probably occupied by "no recent installment loan activity" or something similar.

~ Kind of... Reading that snapshot now (not from Dumbee but actually to Dumbee) just made me rethink about the # of pts lost. Not completely sure my new logic is correct, kind of doubt it now as I post but was wondering if that is now a debunked analysis. No access to reason stmts I'm aware of. No Discover card, no applications denied. But I would think I had no negative statements.?. No stmt/reasons on myFICO report or EX report.

You more than likely have negative reason statements. Actually with less than an 850 score you'd have to have them by definition, because all a negative reason statement means is that your score is being held back at least 1 Fico point for that reason. At less than an 850 you'd have to have them. I think because most CMS omit them at 800 many people think that they don't have any, when they are always there just not being displayed. This is why Discover CLI denial letters are so great because they provide them up to 849. At a score of 849 I would almost always have 2 negative reason statements provided.

I'd actually probably make the argument that at 850 people still have negative reason statements present due to the top end buffer built into models like F8, but I know of absolutely no sources or CMS that still provide negative reason statements at a "perfect" score of 850.

Agreed. Aware I simply can't see them based on scores. Oh well. Just thought I'd throw it out there to see if I could learn something new. So do you agree with the snapshot in my OP?

I also agree that no installment has probably moved to #1 reason.